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Lot Essay
A tazza with similar fine wrigglework style engraving of birds, flowers and figures forms part of the church plate of All Saints Church, Durrington, Wiltshire, illustated in J. E. Nightingale, The Church Plate of the County of Wilts, Salisbury, 1891, pp. 39-40, (fig. 1). In place of the central courtship scene found on this tazza, the Durrington example is engraved with the donor's arms, however around the centre are putti, birds and flowers of identical style to those engraved on this piece. It also features the scene of the lamb lying down with the lion at the base of the engraving. John Hayward in Huguenot Silver in England, London, 1959, pp. 67-68 discusses this engraving style. He believes that, unlike the later French inspired engraving of the early 18th century, this form is a product of the English engraver's imagination, rather than a direct reproduction from a pattern-book or print. Although parallels can be drawn between the birds on the tazza and those engraved by John Overton and published in his A New Book of all Sorts of Birds of 1671. Hayward notes that the wrigglework technique is more usually found on pewter pieces of the period. However a pair of mugs of 1692, from the Ashmolean Museum, which are also decorated in this manner, are cited by him as a rare silver examples (J. Hayward, op. cit., p. 68, fig. 16A). A further pair of similarly decorated mugs were sold from the collection of the Duke of Northumberland, Sotheby's London, 3 May 1984, lot 47. The whimsical nature of the decoration owes something to the Chinoiserie chased ornament of the 1680s but stumpwork and embroidery supports a closer comparison. The courtship or betrothal scene, as found on this tazza, is perhaps the most commonly non-biblical scene embroidered in the 17th century.
